Channeling

I RECEIVE SOUNDS AND IMAGES but I can’t control the frequency or the content. This is how I knew she was with someone else---I saw two hands gripping her thin hips, heard her voice release in a waterfall of orgasm.

When she comes home, I have already begun and I stay invisible for days until she finally says, “You know things. You always do.” She moves out on the weekend but the sights and sounds of her never do.

{

She sits on a blue vinyl chair holding the silver railing of the bed where mom sleeps. She looks neither anxious nor sad, just tired.

}

Six months later her mother is in the hospital. She sits on a blue vinyl chair holding the silver railing of the bed where mom sleeps. She looks neither anxious nor sad, just tired. I see her as clearly as I do each time, at night, my eyes closed in bed.

The next day I call her, she says, “You know things.”

“I’m sorry Sylvie.”

She makes a noise “hmmm” as if she just can’t explain anything. “Are you still in love with me?” she asks.

And then I catch a glimpse of her eyes, sunken into purple rings and I know she’s been beaten.